Brick & Mortar – Copic style…

Background stamps are such a great tool in your arsenal. When I first saw these bricks from Hanna Stamps I began to immediately formulate how to color them.

What was less obvious was what sentiment I would use on a card with them. I kept thinking of 'hitting a brick wall' (encouragement). Or 'it hit me like a ton of bricks' (love). But then suddenly inspiration hit — and I made this shopping-themed card with my own custom sentiment:

And I used these papers from Graphic 45 Transatlantique collection to make a card about shopping in NYC. That shopping trip is put off until Fall / kids back in school. But it's on the calendar! One of the benefits of living in Connecticut is that NYC is 2 hours away and that NYC is 2 hours away, if you get my meaning. LOL!

So back to the bricks, before the NYC girls start hurling them at me. First and foremost – I'm creating a background; but one I will be cutting out. So I don't care if my work goes over the lines.

I used R24 to color the background. I went back and forth rather quickly, rather than the usual smooth circles. I wanted some texture.

Next, I took my Colorless Blender (0) and dragged it across each brick to create a mottled look.

Then, I took R46 and 'flick feathered' it from the right side of each brick towards the center.

Followed by R59 in a similar stroke from right to left on each brick.

The image was then cut out, and I ran a colorless blender pen (0) with a ruler along the 'mortar' of each rose of bricks.

Do you have any ideas you'd like to share for using this brick stamp? Post a comment here, and I'll decide a winner by Friday for this *other* cute background stamp by Hanna Stamps — the wood flooring. It would work for flooring, a dock, siding on a house — very versatile.

Comments

well, I would use it for a brick wall (a fence), and maybe have plants growing in front of it with a cat sitting on top..
not as cute and clever as you Sally Lynn …
thanks for the coloring lesson!
Sandra

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About Sally Lynn MacDonald

Sally Lynn often mixes her love of creating and teaching art with her high-tech side – blending a love of handmade art with hybrid-digital media in what she playfully calls her ‘studio lab’. Every now and then her large-format printer is subjected to printing on a surface that definitely is not listed in the owners’ manual.

She is a maven for studio organization, using her abilities to use spreadsheets and databases to bring order from chaos. “It’s marvelous when the right and left brain actually work together in the studio!” Read More…